RUSH: Yesterday we played a clip of Trump. He was talking to reporters in the Oval Off… Well, no. It was at the infrastructure event that the president had, and we may have been the only ones to point this out.
Trump said yesterday that Soleimani was planning to blow up the U.S. embassy, and I remember asking, “Is that not news?” Nobody in the media touched on it. Nobody in the media covered it. Now we know why today. It’s because they’re trying to claim that Trump is lying or that he’s wrong about it or that he’s making it up to benefit himself somehow — which is what they’re continuing to say, that everything Trump does is for him.
“He’s putting himself before American policy!” I don’t know how this does that, but that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. I thought it was news yesterday when Trump said that Soleimani was planning to blow up the U.S. embassy — this would be in Iraq, in Baghdad — and if that’s true, that’s reason enough to take the guy out. That’s called “connecting the dots.” Let me repeat for you. People may not know this. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world that we have.
The U.S. embassy in Baghdad is almost as big as Vatican City, and nobody knows this because there are never any pictures of it, and it’s… You know, it’s not a featured destination. It’s not a great diplomatic appointment. It’s not like being appointed ambassador to the Court of St. James. (That’s Great Britain.) I mean, that is a cushy, ceremonial, really cool gig. Ambassador to Iraq? Your life is on the line.
This thing is heavily fortified. It goes back to the days of our invasion, the establishment of the Green Zone. You know how much it cost to build this embassy? It was $1.3 billion. The embassy, our embassy in Iraq has offices for more than 16,000 personnel. That would be a lot of casualties. If you have an embassy that expensive, that big, that many people in it, and you have intel that the military terrorist architect in Iran is gonna hit it?
Well, there’s your dot that you connect, and you take the guy out.
He deserved to be taken out even if this wasn’t the intel, which is another point that Trump has been making. He’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of military personnel — IEDs, “roadside bombs” that Trump refers to them as. “A senior defense official backed up the statements later on Thursday, telling reporters the U.S. had intelligence about multiple plots and threats involving Soleimani, including one that involved a plan to attack the embassy using explosives,” and then Trump made the point again last night at his rally in Toledo.
So here. Let’s go back to the audio sound bites. Number 6 we’re up to. This Jackie Speier, Democrat from California last night on CNN.
SPEIER: I have been briefed on it in the Intelligence Committee, so I’m not really at liberty to say. But if what is being projected is true, uh, this is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the president of the United States.
RUSH: There you go. We are to blame! It’s our fault here. The question she was asked: “Do you think the Iranians assumed this was some sort of U.S. military plane?” This is about the Ukrainian jet that was shot down. Somehow, this is our fault. Somehow, this is Trump’s fault. Somehow that Ukrainian airliner taking off at Tehran — you know, the Ayatollah International — is Trump’s fault.
These people are loony. It’s delusional. (impression) “Well, I’ve been briefed on it in the Intelligence Committee and am not really at liberty to say. But if what’s being projected is true, this is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been…” So we take out Soleimani, the Iranians take out a Ukraine jet, and it’s our fault. If you use this kind of thinking, we would never…
And the Democrats have been this way with… I don’t care whether it’s terrorists or domestic criminals. For as long as I can remember, the Democrat attitude toward bad guys is, “Don’t try to catch ’em! Don’t put ’em in jail! You’re only going to make them mad!” That has been their standard operating procedure. When Republicans are in the Oval Office, do not go to war, do not take out terrorists.
It’s only gonna make ’em mad. Everything Bush did, for example, opening up Club Gitmo and having Abu Ghraib, all of that was just going to be a gigantic recruitment for terrorism, right? This is what the Democrats always do, find a way to blame us, find a way to blame their own country, even when we take proactive, defensive measures.
And I, for one, get tired of it. I get tired of hearing these people consistently side with bad guys. I don’t care whether they are domestic criminals; I don’t care whether they are international terrorists; they definitely are the blame-America-first crowd.
Here’s Mazie Hirono, Senator from Hawaii. She was also on CNN this morning. The question: “President Trump claimed that Soleimani was actively planning new attacks, looking at attacking U.S. embassies, not just in Baghdad. Did you see any intelligence that said that?”
HIRONO: No. So this is an example of the president embellishing as he goes. I have no idea where he got that from, but that’s par for the course for this president.
CAMEROTA: The intelligence that you saw did or did not suggest an imminent attack?
HIRONO: It did not suggest to my, uh, I, I concluded after the, after the fact briefing that was done, uh, after the president’s, um, basically impulsive decision to kill Soleimani, uh, that there was no imminent threat.
RUSH: Now, folks, she couldn’t do a better job if she was a spokeswoman for the mullahs. Somebody tell me the difference. “I didn’t see any intel.” Well, maybe they didn’t show you anything because they were afraid people like you would leak it. Maybe they didn’t show you the intel because they know or suspect that you would use it somehow to undermine the president since that’s the chief modus operandi of the Democrat Party today, is to do whatever they can to damage Trump. You know, whatever mess they make in the process they’re telling themselves they’ll fix later, after they get the White House or what have you.
You couldn’t have a statement that was more friendly and supportive of the mullahs, the ayatollahs in Iran, than what you just heard there from Mazie Hirono. Here is the blackface prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, late yesterday afternoon in Ottawa talking about the crash of the Ukraine international plane. There were some Canadians on board. And this is his response.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: It seems this is the end result of a sequence of events that was sparked by the drone strike ordered by the U.S. president. So given the information you have, how much responsibility does the United States bear for this tragedy?
TRUDEAU: The evidence suggests that this is the likely cause, but we need to have a full and complete and credible investigation to establish exactly what happened. That is what we are calling for and that is what we are expecting will happen.
RUSH: Now, he was asked again in French, the little blackface prime minister there, and here is how that sounded.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (through translator) Do you feel that the U.S. is partly responsible for this, given that they created the situation in which the missiles were launched?
TRUDEAU: (through translator) I think that’s one of the many questions that people will be thinking about.
RUSH: Now, you people, I don’t care if you’re Trudeau, if you’re Mazie Hirono, Jackie Speier, Eric Swalwell, Pelosi, Adam Schiff, let me just tell you something. I don’t know if you’ve looked at the polling data yet, but if you people want to continue to try to separate Trump from his supporters, if you want to try to run his public approval numbers down by taking the side of an avowed enemy of not just ours, but Israel and other American allies, then go right ahead. But I for the life of me can’t figure out your thinking.
Do you really think that by opposing the president and sounding sympathetic to the Iranians, you are going to hurt Trump? Have you learned nothing in the last three years? You guys are a bunch of Wile E. Coyotes. Every Acme corporation bomb has blown up in your face, in your hands. And you keep running and buying more of these bombs, and they keep blowing up on you.
You really think this, Justin Trudeau, you really think blaming Trump for the Iranians shooting down a Ukraine airliner is gonna sell? In order to pull something like that off, in order to make that, you have to have a foundation of pre-existing hate for Trump beyond your own sordid, radical base. And you don’t. You’re doing the exact opposite of what you intend. You are building support for Trump.
People are rallying around Trump, they are supporting, they are cheering what this president is doing in every which theater you can imagine: economics, domestic policy, foreign policy, War on Terror, he’s being cheered. People are lining up in subfreezing temperatures for hours to get into his rallies. And you really think that you’re gonna make hay by blaming Trump for what the Iranian terrorists are doing?
And then by saying Trump had no reason to take out Soleimani, even though he is responsible without any imminent attack, for the deaths of hundreds of Americans so far and counting? So you’d have to conclude they’re not that dumb. So this is obviously fundraising. But I’ll tell you what else it is, folks — and coming up I’m gonna break this down — the Democrat Party, outside of the media, has become leaderless in Washington. It isn’t Pelosi. And it’s not Chuck You Schumer. And it isn’t anybody.
There’s nobody establishing a leadership plan, a leadership strategy. There’s nobody enforcing discipline on the troops. It’s just everybody out there speaking and doing for themselves, trying to get noticed and the Drive-Bys are televising all of it hoping somebody connects with the American people on some level that they could actually oppose Trump or cause him problems. But they’re just flailing away.
I mean, stop and think, you literally pass two articles of impeachment, and you don’t send ’em to the Senate? And you think somehow this is gonna cause negative numbers for Trump when what it does is cause average, ordinary American to say, “What the hell are you doing? Okay, so you impeached the guy. Now what? You’re not gonna send the case over to the Senate? There’s not gonna be a trial?”
It’s the Democrats and their actions that are inexplicable. Not true. They are totally understandable. They’ve been poisoned with partisanship and hatred, and it’s clear as a bell that’s what drives them.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ll tell you what’s actually kind of funny about all this is that when you boil it all down — and don’t misunderstand me. I mean this specifically. Donald Trump is an anti-war president. He campaigned on anti-war. He campaigned on ending wars and ending our involvement in ’em when there’s no national interest. He campaigned on getting us out of them, and he’s doing it. And the Democrats are trying to paint him as a warmonger. That is the nature of the disconnect.
You know Pompeo, secretary of state, and Mnuchin, the secretary of the Treasury, had a little press briefing today. The Drive-By Media was there in all of its ignorant glory about foreign policy and sanctions in Iran. Pompeo outlined who is in charge in Iran and how the sanctions that we have now placed on them after the killing of Soleimani is gonna drive them of any way to grow terrorism.
Trump is literally choking off the economics to grow terrorism. Get this. Pompeo said that Iran’s oil revenues are down 80%. They cannot access 90% of their reserves. Contrast that to the Obama administration. The Obama administration opened rivers of cash for them to thrive, hand delivered it on pallets to their airport. Trump is choking them off and sequestering them without a war.